


Building Blocks

by Doceo_Percepto



Series: A Noncanon Version of Little Nightmares II [8]
Category: Little Nightmares (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, POV First Person, a TAM Six backstory of sorts, some gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26047789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doceo_Percepto/pseuds/Doceo_Percepto
Summary: Everybody's story starts somewhere.
Series: A Noncanon Version of Little Nightmares II [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652644
Comments: 12
Kudos: 44





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> One-shot unless I work up the mojo to write all the way up to TAM.

I don’t remember much about my parents, or the home we occupied. 

I know there was a lot of glass on the floor; their jagged edges were a network of mountains sprawling away from my crib. Glinting and sharp. Above me, wires hung from the ceiling, gutted from their wombs. The windows were boarded shut as long as I knew them. They _had_ to be. 

I remember I had a stuffed lamb, too. I called it lamby. It was flat and its fur was mottled but it trotted all around the room, even up on the walls (as high as I could reach). The moldy smell of its fur lulled to me sleep every night.

As for my parents… they were afraid a lot. I remember that, at least. They always seemed old (but maybe they weren’t) with the furrows in their brows and the lines on their faces. They yelled often, too, except in a quiet kind of way. Yelling but whispering. All of the rage and fear, but very little of the sound. Sound was dangerous, see. Sound meant that the things _outside_ might hear us, and those things very very much wanted to hurt us.

Whenever I cried, they’d knot fabric around my mouth, tight enough to be painful. To make sure those things didn’t hear us.

It was better when I didn’t cry. They left me alone, then. 

My crib was right by one of the windows. Twinkling ethereal lights would play through the wooden slats at night. A whole array of colors. I’d let my fingers flutter through the light, and wonder what it was that was looking in. I hovered by the window often. Only once was my persistence rewarded, and that time stuck out far more vividly in my memory than the multitude of lonely, yearning disappointments.

On that occasion, I imagined I could feel the heat of a creature on the other side, as if it, too, were pressing itself to the window, desiring the inside while I desired the outside. I placed my palm on the wood. Through the cracks I felt its warm, wet breath. The two of us held still, suspended, as if this small interaction might breach the divide between us. It didn’t. The spell shattered. With a panicked crash of its body rattling the boards, it was gone. 

I never met it again. But I did wait, hopeful, and because I waited so close to the boards, I sometimes caught a scent that wafted in. Only ever on nights when the screams outside were especially loud, especially _near._ It was a rich, warm scent that curled pleasantly in my belly. Sometimes I fell asleep leaning up against the boarded window, chasing after that scent. My mom caught me like that once, and yanked me away. Oh, she was real mad then. Red-faced and everything.She didn’t seem to understand. I didn’t have the words to explain.

These touches of the outside world were all I got. And mostly they’re all I recall about my earliest years, except silence, darkness, and the feeling of a saliva-soaked cloth chafing the edges of my mouth.

All of that changed one night. She swept me from my sleep, and carried me out without lamby. I was too sleepy and upset to think about being quiet, and that was wrong of me. She clasped her hand so tight around my nose and mouth that I couldn't breathe. I struggled and thrashed and screamed against her palm but it didn’t matter. 

When I woke up again, she was kneeling over me and she was crying. 

“I’m so so sorry, I’m sorry, we’ll make it up to you, Eleanor, we’ll get you anything you want, okay, baby? Okay? We’re gonna be safe here; it’s different, okay?” I was scared of her, suddenly. My throat and chest hurt. I wanted to be alone again. I wanted to be alone like they used to leave me all the time, with lamby and the screaming outside and the nice smell drifting in.

I got my wish. Sort of. Not the way I wanted it. 

I got my wish, because whatever they were running from caught up to them. It broke in, and there was screaming, and cracking wood and a cacophony of noises so loud that I clapped my hands over my ears and rocked back and forth, back and forth. I knew, though, to be quiet, and so I was. Maybe that’s how they never knew I was there. 

But then I was alone, suddenly, in a stillness that felt different than it ever had before. An emptiness more empty than I had ever known. A silence more silent. The floorboards somewhere distant creaked. Something dripped. I was utterly alone.

Until… I wasn’t. I don’t remember much about that transition. There was some period of time. Starving. Thirsting. Shaking. Watching. Waiting. 

Then there were new parents, and a new house. Did they know my old parents? Did they know me before this happened? Was it coincidence? Did I cry, and they heard, and arrived? I don’t remember.

I do remember they wanted _everything_ to do with me. 

They talked to me. They smiled. They seemed to feel real sorry for me for reasons I didn’t grasp. They held hands sometimes, and looked at me like I was to be pitied. They started to read me books that had colorful pictures in them. They helped me walk, which I was already figuring how to do on my own, and they started teaching me to talk. I didn’t understand why they cared about me. 

One thing I liked is that I got a new toy, a stuffed bear with a bow around his neck. I started to whisper halting words to him. I told him that I didn’t know how to feel about the new house, and the new parents. I told him I was scared. He was a good listener. He was patient. He was always there. 

When I started throwing up most of my meals, my new parents got upset. Not upset like my old parents would be: they never yelled, or whisper-yelled. But they’d get this annoying patient look on their face and try to get me to explain the problem. I didn’t know how to explain the problem. Every time I tried, they only got more upset. They interrogated everything I said. They thought I was being contrary. They thought I was doing it on _purpose_. I wasn’t _trying_ to be bad. I didn’t mean to be. Why couldn't they get that? I _wanted_ to eat. I really did. Just - something wasn’t right. My teddy bear understood. They didn’t. So I didn’t talk to them as much anymore; they only ever used the words against me. 

At least in the new house, I got to go outside. It was rocky and windy and often chilly but it wasn’t being cooped up and I got to roam for what felt like miles. I met another girl, and we got to climb over the rocks together. For a while, it was the most fun I’d ever had. Playing with other people was better than just playing alone. We came up with all kinds of games, like being pirates. I liked her, until I didn’t, but that was her own fault. 

See, we were on the rocky shoals by the ocean. She yelled out, and I stumbled over, and she pointed at a dead bird, going “ _grooosss_!” 

“Dare you to touch it,” she’d said next. 

Something had already been eating at it, and that _scent_ was in the air. The same scent that used to come in through the boarded windows. It didn’t gross me out. And I wasn’t going to be chicken. So I knelt and poked its body. My stomach growled.

She laughed. “Ew! Dare you to lick it!”

I didn’t know there were some dares you were supposed to do and some you weren’t. Nobody had ever _told_ me that.

It wasn’t fair to order someone to do something and then get upset when they did it. 

I knew I did more than she wanted, but so what? When I licked the chewed wound, I couldn’t _stop_ myself from biting in. The feathers prickling my lips were unpleasant, but the meat that sluiced through my teeth brought a pleasure so intense I was swallowing before I could think about what I was doing - and I was diving in for more. More more more. It was a reflex. A warmth bloomed in my chest, a shivery delight got me from head to toe with every swallow, until there was just the mangled remains of a mostly-eaten bird. My thoughts were woozy; nothing had ever felt so feverishly mind-blowing before. 

I looked up hazily, half-thinking to offer her a bite, too. She must have known how nice it was. That’s why she dared it. 

But she was staring. Not in a good way. Her hands were pressed to her mouth. Her face was white as a sheet. An ugly feeling rooted in my chest; something was wrong.

I didn’t understand. “You - you dared me-“ I tried. It was hard to think when I was still feeling so good. Why was she ruining this? Why was she looking at me like that? Didn’t she _want_ me to do this?

She took a step back. She was shaking. I stood up sharply. “What - what’s wrong?”

“Just - just leave me alone-“ Another step; she almost stumbled on the rocks but caught herself. 

Was this a joke? I didn’t think it was a joke. It didn’t _feel_ like a joke. “You dared me-“ I said with more ferocity, following after. 

She seemed to find some courage. “You’re one of those monsters,” she said. “You’re one of the things my parents warned me about -“

“ _No_ -“ I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I didn’t like her tone. How could she be so wrong about me? The dead bird had tasted _good_. If she’d just give it a shot, too, she’d understand - Anyway, if she didn’t want to see me eating it, why would she dare me to? She got everything wrong!

I tried to explain. I tried to stop her. I tried to show her how dumb she was being. But she didn’t listen. She ran off, and her legs had longer strides than mine.

I had to go home alone, and furious, unable to get over what she said. How _wrong_ it was. How she’d ruined our friendship. 

I didn’t see her after that, but I guess she told her parents something, and they told my parents something. The next day my dad sat me down and he asked real quietly and seriously about what happened that afternoon. It instantly had me tensing up. _This didn’t have to be such a big deal._

_Everyone_ ate dead birds; we had chicken on the table, and -

Well, I heard them after. Talking in hushed, low tones behind closed doors. I heard them saying I was one of _them._ I heard them reassure each other it was okay. They knew they might encounter problems when they adopted me. And they were going to fix it. By God, they were going to fix it.

No meat in any of my meals anymore. They watched me take every bite. Sometimes everything was fine. Sometimes I got violently sick. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason, and even though their faces got increasingly strained and worried, they didn’t stop their new diet plan for me. Because it was fine. It just took time. It was going to get fixed.

All of it was an overreaction. All of it made me furious. 

None of this would have happened if that girl hadn’t told her parents. If she hadn’t overreacted. If she hadn’t dared me to. 

Although I was grateful for one thing: I understood now what it was I was _supposed_ to be eating. The one thing they never put on my plate. It really, _really_ didn’t have to be that hard. Pretty much everybody ate meat. In fact, my parents still did! But now, because I _once_ ate something that didn’t come from the fridge, _now_ it was a problem?

This didn’t have to be such a big deal. But because they made it one, I started stealing from the fridge. I’d sit in my room, tucked away, and indulge in the one thing I knew I wouldn't throw up. 

They figured it out. They put a lock on the fridge. 

“Please, Victoria, we just want you to be _normal_ ,” my new mom would plead. 

I didn’t like the word normal. I didn’t feel like I needed to be fixed, either. I just felt sick, because my throat was constantly raw, and my head hurt a lot, and I was losing weight.

I started sneaking out my window at night, and went into the town. The store there sold meat, in all different kinds and sizes, all of it ripe for stealing. Every night I came out with something new, and ate it privately, usually holed up somewhere nobody would find me. The memories of the dark and quiet, of swallowing down each morsel… those are some of my favorite memories. 

Although, I also liked meeting the kids. The outcasts, runaways. I found them in the town sometimes when I snuck out: kids without parents, hiding in trash and hidey-holes. They didn’t seem to have anybody but each other, and they were all welcoming, even though they were thin and frightened. I much preferred their company, and started spending longer and longer in town, less for food and more to play around and have fun with them. I liked to listen to their stories, about distant lands and places. Although, mostly, they had horror stories. Stories about massacres, mind control, people buying and selling children. Stories about experimentation and slavery. I would have told my own stories, but these kids were all older than me, and could speak better. A lot of them got impatient about my faltering speech. I got impatient about my faltering speech, too.

None of these kids stayed too long; they all seemed to be on the way _out_. Away from the shore. That was the only downside of their company - I never got to know any one of them for long. 

Not that it mattered, anyway.

My parents found out I was stealing from town. I only pieced together what happened afterwards, but I guess they noticed I wasn’t so thin. I guess they noticed my empty bed and open window. I guess they noticed several times. And once they came looking for me.

These moments were supposed to be for me only. Alone. Eating. 

These moments weren’t allowed. They took my teddy bear as punishment, and locked my window to stop me leaving. At night, they locked the bedroom door. During the day, I wasn’t allowed to roam anymore.

“Please,” my mom sobbed the first night when I screamed and banged on the door, “please, Victoria, we only want what’s best for you-“

That’s all they ever said. They wanted what’s best for me. Wanted me to be normal. I didn’t understand any of it. I was perfectly normal. If they just let me eat what I wanted. I tried to explain. The mistake was trying. People that don’t want to hear the truth will always find ways to twist your words, especially when you aren’t good at talking to begin with.

So back to no meat. Back to starving. Pacing the room. Yearning. 

Back to being hungry. Constantly hungry.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hh two-shot unless I work up the mojo to write all the way up to TAM

The hunger seemed worse at night. In the silence, and dark, nothing to distract me. It was hard to sleep. Once I was curled up tight, hands around my head, just breathing. But my saliva was really thick. My stomach ached. My pajamas had slipped down to my elbow, and blood beat through my exposed forearm. I thought I wanted to bite in.

I didn’t do it that time. But I thought about it, and it scared me how much I wanted to. Any meat seemed fine. Even alive. Even mine.

I started dreading sleep. Balking to go into my bedroom and be locked in with nothing but myself and my thoughts and my empty stomach.

Sometime after, I don’t remember when, my mom sat beside me on my bed and smiled gently like all it took was kindness. Kindness fixes everything. “You know you can tell me anything, right?” She said. 

I don’t know why she said that, like she thought I was hiding something. I wasn’t, not anymore. They’d exposed and destroyed everything I had tried to hide. 

“Victoria…” she caressed my hair while I sat there stiffly and tolerated it. “We love you very much. And we see you’re struggling. We want to help you.”

To tell the truth, I still didn’t know why they loved me. I had lived with them for years by this point. But I didn’t love them. I felt like I was supposed to, the way the other kids loved their parents. But I couldn't summon to life something that just wasn’t there. I didn’t even really know _how_ to love them, because I didn’t think I loved my first set of parents, either.

They didn’t seem to have the same problem. They told me they loved me all the time. But I didn’t understand why it mattered, anyway. If they loved me with the whole wide world, if they loved me _this_ much, why didn’t they understand me, or give me what I needed? 

What did they actually love?

“We can’t help you if you don’t talk,” she sometimes told me. 

Hearing stuff like that makes it harder to talk. Nobody seemed to understand that. But I did try, once. 

It was before bed again, when she was saying good night and had just kissed my forehead as part of this same dull routine like a kiss is going to make the night less awful.

And I said, “I don’t wanna be locked in my room.” It came out raspy and monotone, missing a few enunciations, but I felt panicky enough to say it anyway. I didn’t want to be locked in and hungry. Not again. I don’t know why, but something about that night, I just didn’t think I could handle it again. 

Her brows scrunched in the middle. “Honey, we don’t want that for you, either. But until we curb these habits-”

Panic clenched tight around my ribs. If I didn’t convince her otherwise, I’d be locked in again. “They’re not habits- I just want to eat- Just a bit of meat. And then you can lock me in-”

“You will eat, Victoria. You’ll have breakfast tomorrow, what dad and I give you-”

“ _No_ -” I jerked away from her. “Please.”

Her lips got real thin. This time her voice had an edge, “You are a young girl, Victoria, you will eat what your parents put in front of you-”

“It makes me sick!”

“-until you learn how to eat like a proper-”

“I hate it!”

“young lady, and don’t you dare interrupt me Victoria Anne M-”

“I wanna eat m-”

“Shut UP!”

The whole room got very cold. I shut up. 

“I’m sorry.” All the tension evaporated from her body. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped at you.” She petted my hair while I sat there stiffly, not responding. “I just - it gets so frustrating. Everything will be easier in a few weeks, trust me. We’ll nip this little problem in the bud and you'll be hanging out with the other girls in town in no time!”

That wasn’t true, by the way. Weeks passed. And nothing really changed. There was a lot of really hard nights. And one that sticks out pretty vividly. 

I was curled in fetal position again, on my bed, and hungry, as always. My forearm was close to my lips. There was that one scent, too, that I had come to recognize as blood, only I wasn’t bleeding. I could smell it through my own skin. Could feel its pumping against my lips. And the warmth of my flesh was terribly soft under my teeth.

I don’t remember deciding to do anything. I don’t think that I had any conscious choice at all.

But I bit in. 

Splitting agony raked outwards, all the way to my fingertips and my elbow. But my mind was on fire with pleasure, with the heat of something alive trapped in my teeth, and wet warmth on my tongue. It was a heavenly bliss I’d never experienced before, better even than when I had eaten the dead bird. But it was excruciatingly painful. And it was that latter thing that had me letting go and breaking into sobs. I don’t really like remembering that moment. It didn’t feel the slightest bit good after the fact, tears and blood all mixed up and my stomach railing furiously and my arm burning. 

Something had to change. Something had to change. I couldn't do this anymore.

Somehow morning came. My mom screamed when she found me. By that time, I wasn’t feeling much, too spent from the sleepless night and accidentally bleeding all over the bed. So I watched my dad and mom tend to me like I was miles away. They cried and bickered and it was ugly and horrible.

“We can’t keep doing this,” my mom said in dismay, and my dad’s face was white as a sheet as he nodded mutely.

“But how else do we handle it?” He said weakly.

“I’m so sorry, baby, I’m so sorry-”

All of this was their fault. I hurt myself because of them. I thought about the kids outside, the runaways whose stories I liked to listen to. They didn’t have parents. I didn’t want parents, either.

I thought about hurting them, except they were both much larger and stronger than me. So instead, I ran away, through the locked window that I shattered.

I don’t regret running away, even after everything that happened. But it is true that when I ran away, I wasn’t thinking about the kind of stories those kids had told. About children slaughtered on a commercial scale, about monsters doing depraved, sick things. They were runaways for a _reason_ , and their reasons were probably better than my reasons for running away from home. 

In the end, it’s probably lucky I ended up at the Nest, because there were far worse places to be. I didn’t feel lucky, though, when the Butler snared me from the streets and we sailed, me kicking and thrashing, to the Pretender’s home. 

That isn’t her real name. I don’t know what her real name actually is. But I was taken to a big room with a lot of other kids huddled together and when they whispered about her, they called her the Pretender.

By the way they talked about her, I thought she’d be closer in appearance to an adult. When I met her, though, she wasn’t much taller than me at all, and all her make up was smeared. Her eyes had this glint in them that meant her sanity had taken a hike a long time ago.

“So you’re the new one!” She crowed. “I’m going to call you Olivia. I _always_ liked the name Olivia. It’s pretty, isn’t it?” So Olivia I became. The third in a line of names that other people chose for me, none of which seemed to fit me.

Of course, the Pretender wasn’t interested in what fit me. She was interested in her own games, and her own reality, where I was little more than a doll to play with. I thought my old life was controlling. Compared to this, it was freedom.

The Pretender picked which clothes for me to wear every day. She told me what to do. How to stand. How to walk. Which character I’d be that day. She made me pretend her dolls were real people, and later I learned they once were. 

Any tiny slight or deviance was cause for a tantrum, and the Pretender could force you to obey. If not by her own powers, then by her Butler’s ability to seize control of you and make you play along. There's no way to describe what that feels like.

The Pretender’s only consistent aggravation was that I never spoke a word to her. And while it sometimes incited her ire, it was something I liked, deep down. Something that I had left of me, that she could never, _ever_ touch. 

She could make me play along, sure. She could make me be whatever dumb character she wanted, and puppet my limbs. She could even make any conclusion about my personality she wanted. But she could never know what I really was inside. And she’d never hear me speak. Who I was became _mine_.

It was the way I felt. The burning anger behind my fear. The constant silent calculating for an escape. The way I slept lightly, always alert. The way I talked to myself in my head when I was playing with the Pretender, telling myself nice things or funny things: little jokes that I kept all to myself. It was how I comforted myself at night, too, petting along my arms and face and rocking softly. It was the furious determination to escape and survive that never, ever left me. It was my hunger, too, and its satisfaction.

All these things were me. _Mine_. When I never uttered a word about any of them, she could never take them away.

Fortunately, I wasn’t her favorite, and she never paid too much attention to me. That was for the best. Her favorites often didn’t last very long. She had really specific ideas about how they were supposed to be, even more specific ideas than she did me and the other less ‘interesting’ kids. They turned into actual dolls way faster. But the dolls didn’t satisfy the Pretender. She wanted the perfect playmate, but wanted it to be a real human. But no real human could ever really match her standards. I hated her, and her selfish stupid impossible views. I hated being her plaything.

There were two things, though, that I _did_ like about my time in the Nest.

One - the food. The Pretender had huge feasts, where she sat at the head of the table and called herself a princess. I didn’t care what she called herself. What I cared about was the variety of food on the table every day. Or the variety of meat, rather. Duck, pig, cow, you name it, she had it, and all in lavish plates and overly ornate dishware. Far far more than I could ever consume. And if I chose to eat meat in far greater quantities than anything else, nobody noticed or cared. I only went hungry on days when the Pretender forgot to feed us, and even those days seemed way easier to handle than when I used to get locked in my room. 

Two - I sometimes got to play with the other girls and boys. We were all kept in one room, and the Pretender never wanted to play with us all at once. Mostly, everyone was too scared to play, but occasionally I could inspire one or another, and those times were really fun. After a certain point I stopped bothering to learn names, since most kids didn’t last very long, and those that did often didn’t feel like playing. But I grew to like the other kids a lot, even if I never grew close to any one in particular. 

The other kids also made the days we went hungry easier. They tended to huddle together, like they were safer that way. It never made much sense to me, but if I huddled with them, and focused, I could smell their blood like I had smelled my own, and it calmed me the way it had when I was a baby in my crib smelling it from outside. They were so warm, always, and their hearts beat fast in fear. 

They made the stay at the Nest more tolerable. But I also knew I couldn't stay forever. Didn’t want to, either. I wanted to be free. I wanted to make my own choices. And if I didn’t leave fast enough, I’d end up as a lifeless doll like everyone else. 

I had to escape, one way or another. 


End file.
